The purpose of this research is to use a unique schooling context (the traditional Quranic school) to study the effects of: (1) large amounts of oral memorization drill on reading acquisition; (2) transfer of cognitive and reading skills across different pedagogical environments; (3) learning to read in first (L1) or second (L2) language; (4) traditional literacy training in the family and societal context. Experimental, observational and ethnographic data will be collected over a 2-year period on 135 5-7 year-old Berber- and Arabic-speaking children (half boys, half girls) in rural and urban field sites in Morocco. Parents of these children will also be interviewed to obtain sociodemographic data, attitudes about child development and literacy, and other information. The experimental tests focus mainly on cognitive pre-reading skills and reading achievement. Multiple regression, correlational and ANOVA statistical analyses and qualitative data will be used to test hypotheses. This cross-cultural project provides an unusual opportunity to separate and study the effects of different pedagogical techniques on reading acquisition, and will add substantially to our basic knowledge of the cognitive prerequisites (especially memory and over-learning of oral discourse) of decoding and interpreting written texts. Also, the project will provide an innovative combination of widely varying analytic methods for the study of literacy in its individual, family and societal contexts.